Chapter Nine
Kelsey greeted Derek in the Delphi Center lobby with a wary smile.
“You’re back,” she said, giving him a hug. She wore jeans with dirt patches on the knees, which told him she’d probably spent her morning outside digging up bones. “Mia’s not in this morning. And I don’t think she’s done with your analysis yet.”
“I know,” Derek said. “Gage told me I’d find you here. These are for you.”
“Hmm . . .” She took the brown paper bag and peeked inside. “Peach kolaches, wow. I feel another favor coming.”
“Word is you guys have one of the best cyber-crime units in the country.”
“The best. It’s headed up by Mark Wolfe. He’s a legend in law-enforcement circles.”
“He around?”
“No.”
“Any of his people around?”
Kelsey tipped her head to the side. “I could probably scare someone up for you. You’ll need to sign in, though.”
Kelsey got him a visitor’s badge from the security guard, and Derek followed her to a bank of elevators.
“You always work Saturdays?” he asked.
“I taught a class this morning on postmortem interval and insect activity.”
“Sounds like a class I’d be tempted to ditch,” Derek said.
“Actually, there’s a waiting list.” She watched him as they stepped onto the elevator and were whisked up to the top floor. “You know, a lot of guys spend their leave drinking beer and picking up women.”
“So I hear.”
The doors slid open, and they stepped out.
“This is about that mission that went sideways, isn’t it?” she asked.
“ ’Fraid so.”
She led him down a long glass corridor. It had a view of the Hill Country on one side and a computer lab on the other.
A tall, lanky man stepped into the hallway. Scruffy, goatee. He wore a Sublime T-shirt and had a computer bag slung over his shoulder.
“Damn, you’re leaving,” Kelsey said.
“What’s up?” His gaze shifted from Kelsey to Derek.
“Ben Lawson, this is Derek Vaughn, a friend of Gage’s. He’s hoping to get your input on something.”
“I’ve got an Ultimate game at ten.”
“This’ll take five minutes,” Derek said.
“Let’s grab a conference room,” Kelsey added, not giving him a chance to resist. She led them into a room across the hall, and Ben sank into a chair. Derek took the seat across from him.
“I’ve got a Web address,” Derek said, “and I need the physical locations of the computers that have posted comments on the site. That something you can do?”
Ben looked Derek over a moment, then put his computer bag on the table and pulled out a Mac. Derek rattled off the address.
“Lot of comments here,” Ben said as he scrolled through the site. “It’ll take some time.”
“But you can get the locations?”
“Sure, provided they didn’t use anonymizers. Even if they did, I can still get them, but it’s more work.”
Derek slid a slip of paper across the table. “I need everything starting with this comment. Especially anything posted from a Houston-area location.”
Kelsey leaned over Ben’s shoulder and read the screen, frowning. “Bathroom tile? What is this?”
“Reads like a coded message,” Ben said.
Derek nodded. “It was posted from a truck stop, possibly by a terrorist who’d just slipped through the border. I think he’s using this home-improvement blog to communicate with his cell.”
Ben leaned back in his chair. “A terrorist.”
“That’s right.”
“Why isn’t the FBI involved?”
“They are. I’m hoping you’re faster.”
“Um, hello?” Kelsey looked at Derek. “Terrorists who tile? What the hell is this?”
“The cyber-jihad,” Ben told her. “The Internet’s become a town square for terrorist orgs. They use it for clandestine communication, recruiting, reconnaissance, even psychological warfare—like when they executed that aid worker and posted the video.”
Derek clenched his teeth as he thought of Ana Hansson kneeling in the dirt. Hailey Gardner would have been next in line.
“You think this is some kind of initiation code?” Ben asked.
“Could be.”
Ben glanced at his watch. “Looks like my game just got canceled.”
Kelsey leaned closer and read the words aloud. “ ‘Interesting Advice Here on Bathroom Tile/Shower. Ready to start Five by Fifteen room.’ ” She looked at Derek. “Sounds awkward, but how is it a code?”
“Look at the caps,” Derek said. “Maybe it really means, ‘I Am Here at Buck’s Truck Stop. Ready at Five Fifteen,’ which is the exact time our tango was picked up by someone at that location. I want to know who that someone was.”
“Mohamed Atta used something similar,” Ben said. “He sent a coded e-mail to Al Qaeda right before the 9/11 attacks. But this could be one-way communication. So I can run this down for you, but there’s no guarantee anyone answered back.”
“I know,” Derek said. “Just do the best you can. Any comment that looks like a reply to the truck stop comment, or anything at all from the Houston area, could be from an accomplice. What I need is a location. Oh, and heads-up, you need to be stealth about it. Don’t leave any footprints on the site unless you want trouble with the feds.”
Ben smiled. “Stealth is my specialty.”
Derek glanced at Kelsey, who was giving him a worried look. It stayed on her face all the way down to the lobby, and he knew what she was going to say as she ushered him out the door.
“Thanks for the help,” he told her, trying to distract her. “Gage speaks highly of your people here.”
“This isn’t your problem anymore, Derek. If they’re in our borders, the FBI has jurisdiction.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then why are you involved?”
“I’m not.”
She looked at him.
“Just doing a little recon, that’s all,” he said. “If I get anything useful, I’ll pass it along.”
“Hey, it’s me.” Derek’s low drawl sent a rush of warmth through her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Working. How ’bout you?”
“Same.”
“How’s it going today?”
Crappy, she wanted to say. She’d spent the past six hours sitting in a sweltering car, sans air-conditioning, staking out an Internet café in Montrose. “Fine,” she said instead.
“Any sightings?”
“No.”
“Me, neither.”
The passenger door opened, and two-hundred-plus pounds of muscled man slid in beside her. Elizabeth’s heart lurched.
“How did you get here?” she blurted.
“Drove.”
“No, I mean how’d you find this place?”
He smiled. “That’s top secret.”
She waited, watching him, and he leaned closer.
“How bad do you want to know? ’Cause I’m willing to give it up.”
“Derek, I’m serious.”
He sighed and grabbed the water bottle from the cup holder. “I know you are.” He took a swig. “I found this place the same way you did, I’m guessing. Traced a blog comment to an ISP. Any new leads?”
She looked out the window, trying to get her heart rate back to normal. Not possible with him in the car. He was in jeans and cowboy boots again, but now he had a leather jacket on, too, probably to conceal the loaded pistol he was no doubt carrying.
“Elizabeth?”
She cleared her throat. “As a matter of fact, yes. We managed to trace the registration sticker.”
“You don’t sound excited.”
“The Chevy’s registered to a student at Rice University,” she said. “He sold his car three weeks ago, presumably to one of our tangos.”
“And?”
She looked at him. “And a week later, he was killed in a mugging.”
“A mugging.”
“Someone accosted him outside a bar here in Montrose. Shot him at point-blank range, took his phone, his wallet. We’re investigating the case now, obviously. There’s an evidence response team at the victim’s apartment, turning the place inside out, looking for anything on this car buyer he met up with right before his death.”
Derek shook his head.
“What do you think?”
“I think they’re cleaning up loose ends,” he said, “eliminating anyone who can identify them.”
She sighed. “That’s what I think, too.”
“Also sounds to me like the car’s important. Maybe part of the plot somehow.”
She thought back to the mangled school bus and stifled a shudder. In the right location, a car bomb could wreak havoc. Should she tell Derek about Zahid Ameen? She’d thought about it. It was something he’d definitely want to know, but he was already too involved.
She looked across the street at the Galaxy Café. It had a giant moon for a logo and offered coffee and free Wi-Fi to a steady stream of starving artists and college students.
“It’s a good strategy,” Derek said.
“What?”
“Staking out the neighborhood. People are creatures of habit, even terrorists. We know one of them used the Internet here. We know one of them bought a car from a kid in school less than a mile away. This feels like their comfort zone.”
“You think? Because to me, it feels like a dead end.” She couldn’t hide the frustration in her voice. “If these guys are so smart, they won’t use the same Internet café more than once.”
She glanced at Derek, whose attention was trained on the door. She thought of his petite mother, who’d been so friendly to her when she stopped by the house yesterday. I’m sorry you missed Derek. Come back anytime. Was it just typical Texas hospitality, or did she really mean it? Elizabeth wasn’t sure why it should matter to her, but it did.
“How’s your family?” she asked.
He sent her a sideways look.
“Your parents? Your sisters? Have you had a chance to see them all?”
“They’re fine.” His tone was cautious, as though he was surprised she’d asked a personal question.
Because why would she? For days, he’d made no secret of wanting to jump into bed with her. But heaven forbid she might ask about his personal life.
She took the bottle of water from him. “They don’t mind you coming home, then immediately going AWOL on them?”
“I don’t stick around the house much when I’m in town. Makes me stir-crazy.”
She guzzled some water. She pictured him at a bar, drinking and picking up women. He probably didn’t even have to put much effort into it. From what she’d seen, women threw themselves at him wherever he went.
The thought put a sour taste in her mouth. Looking out the window again, she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. God, she probably looked terrible. Not that it mattered. But she’d been sitting in this car so long every inch of her felt sticky.
“You ever going to tell me about that scar?”
She looked at him, then back at the café. “It’s a long story.”
He shifted in his seat, settling in. “Good thing we’ve got time to kill.”
He wasn’t going to let it go. She’d known he wouldn’t, but she’d been stalling. She should just tell him and get it over with before he realized how much she hated talking about it.
“It was one of our biggest cases this spring,” she said. “You might have missed it because you were deployed. There was a bombing at a university—”
“Philadelphia. I saw the story. You were involved in that?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am. Would have thought the Philly office would be all over it.”
“They were, but we got pulled in because of a Texas connection. Anyway, we traced one of the suspects to San Antonio. I was following up on a lead, and one of them found me.” She fixed her gaze on the café and let the words flow out without thinking about them. “He disarmed me. Pistol-whipped me. Took me hostage. Would have killed me if someone hadn’t discovered where I was in time.”
“Name?” His voice was neutral, but his look was sharp as a blade.
“What, you want to go after him?”
His silence told her that was exactly what he wanted.
A chill snaked down her spine, and she glanced away. “Doesn’t matter. He’s locked up, and he’s never getting out.”
Quiet settled over them, and the only sound was the grumble of traffic outside. She slid a look at him. Would he really hurt someone for her? In her heart, she knew he would. The thought was disturbingly comforting.
“That wasn’t that long a story,” he pointed out.
She gazed out the window. She’d omitted a few parts. The icy terror of feeling the muzzle against her neck. The burning humiliation of being disarmed and smacked down and at the mercy of a man’s fists. The raw panic of trying to look people in the eye afterward, especially people at work.
Some details she still couldn’t talk about, couldn’t even think about, until Demon Insomnia bitch-slapped her awake in the middle of the night.
Derek reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Sure.” Like it was no big deal.
She stared at his hand, big as a baseball mitt, and felt a warm pull. He’d always seemed so brave. So strong. And she had the urge to fall into him and let everything out, all the pain and fear and anxiety of the past three months. Maybe if she curled up on a giant bed with him, she could just sleep and not lie awake all night, listening to the sound of her own pulse racing.
Yeah, right. If she got anywhere near a bed with him, sleep would be the last thing on her mind.
She tugged her hand away and checked her phone. Nothing. Gordon hadn’t pinged her all afternoon, demonstrating exactly how much importance had been placed on this stakeout: none. No one believed their suspects would use the same Internet café twice.
“Hey.”
She glanced at Derek.
“You look tapped,” he said. “How long you been sitting here?”
“Six hours.”
“Let’s get some food. Torres can cover for you.”
She frowned. “How did—”
“Black Ford at the end of the block. You guys need to get some better cars.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and she knew that he was right. She’d skipped lunch, and she was completely fried.
She picked up the radio and called Torres.
“You have eyes on the door?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“If you can cover this, I’m going to take a quick dinner break.”
“How long?” His tone was clipped, meaning he’d seen Derek slip into the car with her.
“Thirty minutes? I’ll let you know when I’m back.”
She started up the car, cringing at the blast of hot air that shot from the vents. She cranked the AC to high and glanced at Derek.
“Where to? Somewhere close,” she said.
“There’s a Dillo Burger two blocks over.”
She winced. “Sounds like roadkill.”
“Finnegan’s is on Sunset.”
She’d been to Finnegan’s. It was a popular sports bar lined with dark, cozy booths.
“Dillo is closer,” she said, pulling out of the space. She squeezed her way into traffic and glanced at Derek. “Any other leads you want to tell us about?”
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Nope.”
She wasn’t sure whether to believe him. She’d known when she passed along the car info that there was a strong chance he might shut her out and go off on his own. But after all the recent setbacks, it was a chance she was willing to take. SEALs were experts at escape and evasion, and she could use a fresh perspective.
She eased into a turn lane and swung into Dillo Burger’s parking lot. A giant aluminum armadillo sat atop the sign, and she couldn’t believe she was about to buy meat here. She pulled into a space.
“They’d better not have a wait,” she said. “I’m starving.”
Derek clamped a hand over her wrist. “Hold on.”
“What?”
He was staring at the side mirror. Elizabeth turned to see what he was looking at, and her breath caught.
“Oh, my God. It’s him.”